Federico drabbles
by xnessuno
Summary: I'm gonna upload little drabbles, once again with more Federico than Ezio. I accidentally deleted the 2nd and 3rd chapters to my other story and I'm pretty bummed, and I have tons of drabbles, so this'll be updated way more often.
1. Leave

**Hello~ Basically, I have this damn treasure trove of random fics I've written in my life. Me and my friend Katie are like obsessed with Assassin's Creed, and if you're wondering who this Caterina girl is, it's her, because she like loves the character of Federico and I'm written these and others for her. They're alright, and they're relatively short, and the POV alternates. Sometimes it'll be hard to tell, so I'll tell you which is which. Read if you wanna, and review :)**

**lol and Caterina is kind of like a ripoff of Rosa. DEAL WITH IT.  
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><p><strong>Federico's POV<strong>

"Leave me alone, Auditore," she huffs indignantly, crossing her arms over her chest. In her breeches and her green cap, the necklace she had always had strung around her neck since the very first day she arrived in Firenze and before, her socks and nearly worn-through flats, she seemed more like a boy than a girl. An eleven-year-old boy that happened to have long curls and pouty little lips and lashes that curled up, that were so long Federico could have sworn she cut them from her hair and pasted them to her eyes.

"What's wrong?" he taunts, running after her. He was nearly a man, at fourteen years of age. A little beard was beginning to grow, his shoulders were so much broader, he was a head and shoulders taller than he was three months ago, and his voice was deepening. He could have been her brother, if one was idiotic enough to mistake his flirtatious jaunts for brotherly teasing.

Yes, Federico had a tender spot for Caterina. She was still childish, with flat hips and nothing to truly show her femininity except for her face, but she would be beautiful one day. She dressed like a boy, she swore like a boy, she did everything like a boy, but she was still a female. Even if she said not a man in the world could win her heart over like the thieves' guild had, like La Volpe had, like Alfonso and Franco, her little thief friends, did everyday, he was determined to be that man. But someday. Not now.

"I said go away," she groans again. "Just leave me alone. I want to be by myself. I want to be all on my lonesome."

Federico frowns, keeping pace with her surprisingly fast walking. She actually looks hurt, her lips set into a deep frown, her blinking harder than usual. Maybe he had gone too far with his teases this time. He only meant to make her mad, not to make her cry. COULD she even cry? Was she capable of crying? He had seen numerous scrapes, bruises, scuffles with Franco - who seemed not to care she was a young girl - and rough tumbles from rooftops. Never once did he see a tear shed.

"I'm sorry," he sighs. "Is it my fault? I didn't mean whatever I said.

She turns on her heel and shoves him away. It must have looked ridiculous to anyone who saw, the way she literally had to reach up to push him, the height difference. But she was angry. She was actually hurt for the first time, or the first time he'd ever seen her hurt, anyway.

"I said go AWAY," she repeats, all seriousness and excessive punctuality. "You are a PEST. You're like a DISEASE, Federico. Leave me alone just this once, please, I'm begging you."

She turns away, beginning her fast pace again, disappearing into a series of netted alleys full of puddles and drunks sitting in the damp corners. And he stands there. What did he do?

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><p><strong>Caterina's POV<strong>

Caterina kneels in front of her trunk. It served as her wardrobe, filled with three pairs of breeches, a few clean shirts, new flats in case hers wore through too fast, scarves for the cold, and an extra cap. She kept these folded and strategically placed over the items that reminded her of her old life. There were times when she forgetfully tugged out a new shirt, and things came flying out, revealing everything, all the things that told the story of the little girl she was once. There are other times, however, when she does it intentionally And this is one of those rare times.

She does this only to clear her conscience, so she remembers that she wasn't born into this, that she would be married off by now. It helps her recall the nights she ate dinner with all of her siblings, the stories her father told her before bed, the giggles and whispers she shared with her sisters in the dark shadows of the garden as they saw their oldest brother with a girl. It helps her remember who she really is.

She isn't a thief. Not inside. She isn't as hardened as she makes herself seem. On the inside, she's just a piece of clay, dropped into a pot and sealed away. If someone were smart enough to break the pot, or stupid enough to shatter what she spent so long to build up, they would find her, a tender little piece of clay. And she would mold to their ideas. That's what La Volpe, brilliant old Gilberto, managed to do when he found her. And she loved him as a father. But she was waiting for someone else to crack the pot that La Volpe put her in.

With a long breath, she lifts out her breeches. Out come the hats, the flats, her scarves and her shirts to be placed on the floor or flung onto her bed. And she sits with a chest full of her life. Or what still remained of it.

Caterina reaches in. She pulls out the small shoes she was wearing for a month before La Volpe found her in Napoli. Riding boots. She remembers choosing them out of her closet, lacing them messily, and tossing her silky slippers she wore around the house onto the floor. They were muddy and dirty when La Volpe found her, but were shined and cleaned of any scuffs long ago.

Below that, a bracelet. Her sister, Ariana, who was still alive but somewhere else in the world, made it for her, out of extra string. It was neatly braided, made of blue and white, and it would still fit her wrist. She runs it between her fingers, and almost smells the salty air of the Mediterranean around her, the hour she sat on the loggia overlooking the ocean as her sister made it.

And her dress. Blue Venetian silk, patterned with the flowers whose name she couldn't remember but adored. A velvet bodice, satin strings, the lacy ends of her sleeves. The bottom of it had been torn and muddy from all her painful walking, and at the time she was found, it smelled horribly of the days she spent hidden belowdecks to get to Napoli from her home of Sicily. Since then, it was hemmed by an actual professional, a friend of La Volpe's, fixed beautifully. It slips through her hands, and she feels tears fall from her eyes. She clutches it to her chest and inhales deep.

And in her privacy, she hears the familiar creak of her window opening. Turning over her shoulder, she sees Federico, in his familiar red doublet and brown breeches and brown boots, his hair tousled and his lips pursed at the sight of her. He knew nothing of her old life. He didn't know the truth, though she knew he suspected it.  
>"Leave me," she whispers. And he obeys, slipping out again.<p>

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><p><strong>the ending was kind of lame but I was at a loss.<strong>


	2. Love

Another drabble. Kinda cheesy but I think it's okay.

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><p><strong>Caterina's POV<strong>

Caterina fidgets under the eyes of Maria. She was the mother of the four Auditore children, the damn matriarch of the house, and she definitely gave off a strong impression. Of all the visits she'd made to the Palazzo Auditore, the times she sat in their fine garden or sat under the shade of the loggia or lazed on the sofas in the drawing room, she never made any contact with Maria. Maria made no advances to speak to her, but since her first visit, when she was eleven, she felt eyes following her, the all-knowing glance of this woman who could read anyone like an open book, for some reason.

And now, Caterina feels under threat, comfortable, frightened and assured, all at once. Maria's gaze is unnerving and possibly unblinking, due to the fact she blinked only twice in the millennia she's been sizing Caterina up. She feels so shabby, like she's terribly underdressed, which she is. She darned her breeches, sewing a patch onto a small rip because she didn't want to throw it away, not yet, not when it was still cold and they were her thickest pair. Her cap lies beside her, as well as her scarf, stacked on one another. Her vest and shirt might as well have been a dirty toga. Everything about her felt so inferior to Maria.

There were traces of her youthful beauty lingering around her mouth and eyes. Her skin was a light color, like the coffee served with too much sugar and too much cream at the cafes scattered around the city, dark yet light. Her eyes are so much like Federico and Ezio's, a shining amber, smoky and enthralling all at once. She's tall, as tall as Caterina, just a head and a half shorter than her sons and her husband. But the upturn of her lips, the welcoming way she sits contradicts the analytical look in her eyes and the set of her hands, sitting stiffly atop each other.

"Do I offend you, Madonna?" Caterina finally asks shyly. She offers an apologetic smile. "I apologize, if I do. We haven't spoken before, and I'm a bit shy... awkward, I suppose. I know my breeches are horribly unfitting for a young woman..."

Maria smiles wider, letting out a soft chuckle. The girl still fidgets, sighing with some relief at the reassuring sound of the woman's laugh, but she still feels as though Maria was absolutely disgusted with her. Maria had maternal instinct; she knew that she and Federico had been together for a long while, if their soft shushes and muted groans of pleasure in his bedroom wasn't enough of a dead giveaway to the entire family.

"Do you love my son?" she asks now, blatant and forward. Her smile slips from her face, replaced with an expression of concentration, like she was trying to see through the flesh of Caterina's face, through her skull, to see what was happening in her kind. "No, that is an idiotic question. Of course you do. But yours is truer than that of the girls he leaves heartbroken and naked in their beds. No, this is what I meant to ask, I apologize. WHY do you love my son?"

Caterina has no answer. She's taken aback, nearly offended. What kind of a question was that? Why did she love Federico? She parts her lips, preparing an answer, but she finds none. Her face falls, and she furrows her brows, scratching her head in a frustrated curiosity. Why DID she love him? There were many reasons, but they all flew around one another, indistinct and jumbled up. She couldn't just pinpoint one.

"Because..." she begins. She licks her lips, eyes lifting from the rug, narrowing. "I'm not very sure. I just do."  
>Caterina is surprised to see the woman's lips flick up into a soft smile again, a knowing filling her eyes. She has no idea what she's supposed to say, what Maria was going to say. But she feels honest. She feels open. Like she understood all of a sudden. But it isn't a topic for discussion any longer, as Federico enters the drawing room, winded and flushed from his relaying of letters to his father's associates and contacts.<p>

"Off I go, then," Maria says with a sigh, rising from the sofa and shuffling out of the room. "Have your own fun."  
>Caterina blushes and Federico flushes even deeper, looking like a little boy with his hands down his pants and a crude drawing of a naked woman in his sweaty palms. He looks towards Caterina, dark eyes apologetic, and shrugs.<p>

She just loved him because she did, she realizes, with more clarity, as she pinpoints the little freckle on his jaw, the scar on his left hand from the time he cut himself with a knife meant to open letters, and the boyish grin that made her breath slip from her lungs, the right side of his mouth always lifting a bit higher than the right. She just loved him because she did.

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><p><strong>Federico's POV<strong>

"Do you love her, or something?"  
>Federico looks towards his little brother, dangling his legs from the rooftop of the tower they were precariously perched on. Below them, the people of Firenze, citizens they bumped into when they were running through the streets, courtesans Federico had fucked, the doctors they went to for creams to disinfect the scrapes they sustained from trips and falls with the thieves. It made both of them feel like they were apart of something bigger, like they were above all of this. And, of course, there was the thrill of sitting so high up.<br>"Mama?" Federico responds with a cock of his brow. "Of course I love Mama. Claudia? She can be annoying but she's our sister. Who are you talking about?"  
>But they both knew who he was talking about. Ezio, fourteen years old and already more honest about these matters than his seventeen-year-old older brother, makes a face at Federico. Caterina. He was talking about Caterina, who was sitting on a rooftop a few houses away, leaning against the chimney and listening to the perverted comments Alfonso and Franco made about the girls they'd fucked in the brothels over the years. Her hair was pulled into a loose bun, with stray tendrils falling here and there in long, loose curls, dark in contrast to the creamy white of her flesh. Her white skin seemed to glow against the dark night. Nobody could believe she was from Sicily, if it wasn't for the differences in their dialects and her temper.<br>"Her, Federico," Ezio says, softer now. "Do you love her?"  
>Federico scratches his brow, looking at the girl, all the way over there, oblivious to the eyes on her. Her legs are crossed. She gives shouts that were inaudible to him, shoving Franco away from her with laughter as he immaturely stuck his tongue out at her and shrugged his shoulders. Her smile slips from her face, and her eyes begin to rove, finally finding the brothers on the tower. They were both so tiny to one another, but she was looking right at him, and he right at her.<br>"Si," he nods, without knowing it, as she jerks away from his gaze. "Si."  
>He hears the chuckling of his younger brother, which broke into laughter that echoed, laughter that would have given their position away to the guards that gave them multiple warnings for their rooftop antics. He laughs until the people below them begin to look up and think an angel was laughing down at them. He laughs until he can't breathe. Federico frowns, clapping a hand over Ezio's mouth, and the boy stills so suddenly, it was frightening.<br>"You're a lovesick teenage boy," Ezio says with a teasing lilt, flicking the older boy's ear. "But do you think she loves you, Federico?"  
>To that, he receives no reply.<p> 


	3. One and the Same

This is kind of the life I created for Caterina. It'll be described in more detail later on.

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><p><strong>Caterina's POV<strong>

Caterina rubs her drooping eyes furiously. She has no idea what hour it is, only that it's night, the dead of night. She's eight years old and exhausted, her feet ache from her constant walking, and she left the nearest town in the middle of the afternoon. All she managed to eat for the past three days was the meal offered to her by a sympathetic bartender at a low tavern in the town she passed through that day: a plate with stale biscuits, decently prepared pasta, a piece of cheap veal, and after letting her rest in the back room, she sent her off with a heavy jug of water dangling from a thick, rough leather strap. Her arm was aching from having to carry the jug, but then again, her entire body was aching. Where was she going to sleep?

So she keeps walking, playing scenarios from the past weeks, as if her life was still normal. Paulo, her oldest brother, and his pretty girlfriend that he so fancied, hungrily kissing in the garden. She thinks of the way her mother scolded her for getting her skirts dirty in the sand on the beach. She rubs over her fingertips, feeling the little pricks still there from her pitiful needlework.

"I'm so tired," she whines to herself, feeling tears beginning to well under her closed eyelids, her eyes pulsing with her headache from the heat. "I'm so tired."

"So stop walking."

Her eyes open immediately, her exhaustion replaced by fear. Clutching her water jug close to her, as if it would protect her, her eyes widen, and she tries to see into the pitch blackness of the shabby, worn down, thatch roofed stable on the side of the road, where travelers were allowed to rest with their horses. She can only hear soft shuffling, make out the vague outline of a boy, and thinks the Angel of Death has come to collect her. Perhaps Ariana, her sister who had managed to escape, was dead, too. Perhaps everything was going to be fine where she was going.

To her surprise, a boy not much older than her emerges. His frame is wiry, and he's a bit dark, the sun clearly favoring him. Little patches adorn his shirt and trousers, lamely darned, as if he had to do it himself with the inexperienced fingers of a boy used to outdoor activities. His face still has the roundness of a baby.

"The bandits will find you. I'm surprised they haven't already. You're dressed so finely, they'll cut the dress right off of your body and kill you. Come. Just sleep in the stables for the night."

She hears the stamping of a horse's feet, the loud huffing of its breath, and realizes he must have ran away from home. But she's still distrustful. How can she trust anyone? None of her family is with her, and she's a confused little girl with a quaking head ache and tired eyes. Her pulsing feet and trembling shoulder make her sigh. Any hard-packed dirt would make a good bed.

"How do I know you're not one of these bandits, then?" she asks softly. "How am I suppose to trust you?"

"I wouldn't be sleeping in an incredibly dark stable if I was a bandit. I would be stealing from an idiot like myself. I have no family. I'm simply trying to get away."

"And my family is dead."

His face drops, and he reaches out. "Come, then. We're one and the same."

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><p><strong>Federico's POV<strong>

Federico has a temper. He can admit that. Unlike his father once did, unlike his brother still does, he doesn't show it physically. Perhaps it's because his demeanor is so like his mother's, observing and analytical behind his flirtatious and teasing ways, that he's able to control this. All he does is clench his jaw, act as if he's unaffected. It benefits him and others, in the end.

But today, today he can't help himself. Stefano DiPaula, with his dark curls and his constant smirk, just wouldn't leave. Federico tried his very best to ignore him, to let it all go, but he's a teenage boy, charged with hormones. Nothing can stop a temper like his, so intense but so contained, from flaring, when an idiot like Stefano won't fucking leave him BE.

So he's beating him into the ground. His shirt is blood-stained and off to the side, Stefano's torn, scraps fluttering with the breeze. He cries for his mother, as Federico beats and punches furiously, his face red with anger, jaw vibrating from how tightly it was clenched. He sits atop the boy, completely controlling him. He isn't satisfied with the black eyes he gave him. He wanted at least to break his nose, to knock out a tooth, and give the boy a goddamn warning.

"Federico!"

He breaks out of his trance, seeing his father so easily parting the sea of frightened boys, whose cries had died down to murmurs of whether or not they should leave before their parents inevitably found out about their involvement in the scuffle. But they were all so enthralled... And now they ran, away from the waves of anger that rolled off of his father.

"Go," he barks at Stefano, who scrambles to his feet, running as fast as his bruised body could carry him. He grabs Federico by the arm, lifting him up roughly. Looking towards the brown shirt his son has been wearing, he deems it too torn to take home, and looks towards his son again. "This is idiotic, my son."

Giovanni sighs and removes his coat, forcing the boy to put it on, so he wouldn't have to walk home shirtless. Federico rubs his sore nose, prods at the bruise on his cheekbone, and shuffles home. His father unlocks the side door in silence, and takes him to his study, his inner sanctum that Federico rarely ever saw unless he was in to pick up the letters he was supposed to deliver to pigeon coops and messengers and deliver the messages he received.

"You're no different than him if you act like that," Giovanni sighs as he withdraws bandaging from a drawer behind them, much to Federico's surprise. He says nothing. "No different. You are one in the same if you choose to act so brashly. I was like that, when I was your age, but you're different. Do you realize that? You're such an odd boy. But you will be no different than the stupid boys like Stefano is all you're looking for is a rough scuffle in the middle of the Ponte Vecchio."  
>Federico nods. "I apologize, Padre."<p>

"Oh, it's not me you need to be apologizing to, but your mother." He sees the flicker of sudden fear at the wrath of his mother's disappointed anger and her concerned maternal instinct all at once, and he chuckles. "I'll try my best to calm her down. But be careful next time. Just show your odd indifference when they approach you, if your beating hasn't scared them enough."

He nods again. No different and indifference. That was it.

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><p><strong>Again, the ending is kind of eh, but they're drabbles.<strong>


	4. La Volpe

**Like I said, Caterina is kind of a knockoff of Rosa. I'm unoriginal. I always liked Volpe more than Antonio, though. And Franco is also a thief so yeah this is how Caterina and him were found by La Volpe.**

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><p>Caterina looks up at the foreboding Milanese sky. It's always raining, or overcast, casting shifty little shadows through their duomo, making the slate gray walls look as though the entire city is in black and white. It was nothing compared to Florence, nothing compared to Napoli, but it had its own charm, its own beauty, a certain hospitality and strong French influence among the citizens, though they didn't reject the Italians; they were Italians. She looks towards Franco, the boy she found in the stables, who turned out to only be ten-years-old, with his dark hair and dark skin, and compares it to the fair hair, fair skin, and light eyes that most of the Milanese seemed to have.<p>

He fared well on his own, she discovered. His father abandoned his mother, who had him when she was only fourteen, and died from complications during childbirth. He was given to a distant cousin of his mother, who happened to be a courtesan, and after a few years, he couldn't stand it, and wandered on aimlessly since he was seven.  
>It made herself think she was weak. He shrugged, said he was practically born on the streets, that the way he lived was in his blood. She was noble. She was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, had a wet-nurse, a nursemaid, knew how to speak French and Spanish and Latin as well as a few other Italian dialects besides Sicilian.<p>

So that was how they got along. Franco found food and started fires, searched for cheap inns or empty stables, while she spoke to foreigners, people who had carriages that linked the children's horses to their own and jostled along on dirt roads. He knew how to pickpocket decently enough, accidentally bumping into people, and with his large hazel eyes and his boyish charm he was able to make it out of the predicament with a handful of coins and an apology from the idiot he stole from.

"We're too far north, Franco," Caterina remarks, steering her pony closer to his actual horse. Her little pony, who she named Paulo, was missing an eye, and left to wander the mountains alone with no food, deemed useless. He was skinny and trembling when she discovered him, and she slowly nursed him back to health, eventually using him so she didn't have to constantly sit with Franco, who originally protested the horse. "We should have stopped in Roma or Firenze."

"We can go to Venezia," he says, trotting along on his horse, Angela.

"No. Firenze or Roma. Venezia has mean guards, too. Or that's what my father told me."

"Your father told you fairy tales. Why would they call it La Serenissima if it was so bad there?" He snorts. "Come on, Caterina. What would be the difference if we were to live in Firenze? What's in Roma?"

She swallows thickly. She had coins sewed so tightly into her dress, in a small pocket, that they never jingled. They bruised her side by now, so tightly packed, like a little ball of metal, and they could easily buy them a month's stay at a cheap inn with complimentary meals. She could buy three new dresses with it. A brand new pony. A hundred loaves of bread. Her money made no difference to where they settled, really, as long as they had it. So why Firenze?

"Please, Franco."

He only huffs, and they find a stable to tie up their horses, slipping a few coins to the surprised stable boy who leans lazily against the side of the stalls. "We need food, for the time being," he says, eyes roving over the street lines with stalls and shops the stables was at the end of. "Loaves of bread would be enough. You remember what I taught you, si? Just swipe it and go."

Caterina nods. She wasn't proud of it, but she was talented enough at thieving. She went far enough to take the small, fluffy cakes, sprinkled with sugar and topped with a creamy spread that she loved so much. She and Franco didn't ration those, only ate them and split one to feed to their greedy horses, and lived off of stale bread.  
>For an hour, she snatches fruit, vegetables, colorful candies wrapped in twisted tin, entire loaves of bread, and stores them in the sack she carried around, as if she were an actual shopper. She goes unnoticed, but she feels eyes on her, and hopes to God she wasn't caught.<p>

So Caterina flinches when a hand appears on her shoulder. Her elbow flies back, her eyes widening as she looks back, lips trembling. A man, maybe in his late 30s, lines beginning to set around his mouth and in his forehead, dressed in a brown cape and simple clothes, looks down at her. His eyes are shocking, a bright violet. But she isn't frightened, for some reason.

"What is your name, piccola?" he questions in a soft voice, kneeling down to her eye level. She realizes he's standing at the mouth of a darkened alley, and wonders if she should trust him. No, not yet.

"Constanza," she lies. Her mother's name.  
>"That isn't really your name, is it? How do I know you aren't lying to me, when a girl dressed as finely as you is snatching from fruit stalls and vendors? I see you." He smiles, relaxing her. "My name is La Volpe."<p>

She crinkled her nose. "The fox? That can't be your real name."

"They call me many things. Taglione, most recently, but many, many things. I am Gilberto. But what they call me, what you shall call me, is La Volpe. People do not know my name."

"But you told me..."

"And you keep it to yourself," he whispers, looking around suspiciously. "I am wanted for thievery. I can be in two places at once, and see through walls, and I've stolen from the papal carriage while the Pope himself was inside. Or so the people say. So I am La Volpe."

"I am Caterina," she finally says. "Why approach me?"

"I just have a feeling about you."  
>She doesn't know what feeling he has. But the pleasant way he smiles at her, the honesty about his actions cancelled out anything bad about him. She smiles back.<p>

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><p>Everyone in Firenze, everyone in Italia heard stories of La Volpe. He was a fable and a person all at once. People muttered his name, thieves said that he did, in fact, exist, but average humans had yet to see him for their own eyes. Anyone who said they DID see him never had anything to prove it. But the stories never stopped.<br>He could see through walls. He could be in two places at once, according to two crazy men who said they saw him at the same time, while he was on the roof of a church and across the piazza. Others said he stole from the papal carriage while the pope himself was inside. But those were just as fictitious as his existence.  
>Federico thought he was just an idol made up by the thieves. If he did exist, he clearly had no interest in Firenze, although they said he led the thieves' guild in the city. But he was never seen by many people at once.<p>

So he still climbed the roofs freely. The only main threat to him were the guards and their arrows, but they could never shoot a boy with a father like his. Not to mention he was dressed so finely, it was easy to tell that if they didn't shoot accurately, he would come home to his parents and beg the guard be killed. He would just escape with a warning.

Tonight, he clambers up the side of a building using jutting beams and stacked boxes. Ezio, being only nine and inexperienced, was secretly using the ladder against their mother's wishes. Federico just dashes up the side of a building, hoisting himself up onto the roof from a beam, and is surprised to see a set of legs.

His eyes flicker up, seeing whoever stood casually in front of him. A slight frown and violet eyes meet the gaping set of his mouth and wide amber eyes. Set within the dark depth of his hood, was La Volpe himself. The fable. Federico knew it. He was pale like the Milanese and his eyes were a bright violet, as if they were MEANT to see through , as the sound of Ezio huffing and puffing makes its way to their ears, he offers a smile, and it's like he disappears into thin air.

"Federico?" Ezio calls with short pants from the long trip of the ladder. "Where are you?" He shuffles behind the chimney, finding his brother there. "Oh. Why do you look like that? What happened? Hello? Federico, come on."

"Nothing," he answers, shaking his head. "You'll think I'm crazy."


	5. Scars

**Federico's POV is always shorter than Caterina's... he's easier to sum up, I suppose. His POV is more about how Caterina's scars came to be and Caterina's POV is how he'll always get his.**

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><p>Federico runs his fingertips over the lighter shade of the scar tissue that dotted the surface of Caterina's smooth skin. Oddly enough, he liked her scars. It set her apart from the girls he slept with before, with their skin that nearly had no pores, and limbs so perfectly proportional, they seemed unreal. The two inch-long mark on her arm, or the long stretch of whitened tissue on her thigh made her seem more human, for some reason.<p>

She sleeps peacefully, not even stirring from the contact of his touch. He traces his finger over the scar on her thigh. He was there when it happened, the actual wound. Franco's blade tumbled out of its sheathe and slashed the skin open. A simple flesh wound, but she still gave him a heavy punch to the face.

The one on her arm. It was a nick, a scratch from a tumble on a roof, the reminder from a terra cotta roof shingle that came loose with her fall. A small shard of it stuck in, she told him with a wince and a shake of her head, and La Volpe pulled it out with his bare hands rather than the pair of tweezers that Santino, a long-time thief, offered.

Another on the palm of her hand. It wasn't from a blade or caused by an accident, but from a doctor. When she was five, she became infected with some sort of fever, and they needed to draw as much of her blood as they could at one time. So they just slashed her palm open, where a prominent vein was, letting it drip into a bucket while she cried into her mother's shoulder.

A large one, half the length of his forearm, spans straight down her back. It isn't fresh, fading into the lightly tanned skin, but it was the worst. It was the only one she never told the story of, her lips firming and settling into a hard line, giving a soft shake of the head at Federico.

He leans down and presses his lips to it, wondering what it would be from. She clearly had repressed memories because of it, something she tried to bury but couldn't, like the silky blue dress that sat at the bottom of her chest.

Federico liked her scars the most, though, because it made her seem like him. Behind the soft femininity concealed behind her thieving, swearing self, she was just scarred and patched back together. She didn't have as many as him, never as many, but it gave him an excuse to worry, too. Made him feel less guilty about the way she gasped and ran a hand over the fresh stitch on his back from a mistakenly judged step at the wrong time.

It made him feel like they were just the same. And it satisfied him beyond belief.

* * *

><p>Caterina digs through the darkened depths of the cupboard in the barely decent infirmary of the guild. It was a small room, with a cot in the corner and a tiny window, barely big enough to open and let in a small flow of air. The cabinet, however, was every single thief's worst enemy. One moment a salve would be sitting on a shelf, perfect and within reach, and if you reached in, you would cause a domino effect, knocking over bottles and containers like a bumbling idiot.<p>

Federico lies on the cot, on his stomach, his back smeared in his blood, a gash spanning from his shoulder to halfway down his back. He pissed off the wrong guard, apparently, and immediately came to her, since she was the closest. Caterina was a reliable enough nurse, cleaning and wrapping the wounds efficiently.

"Cazzo," the girl swears loudly, but leaves the row of bottles she knocked over alone, yanking her arm out of the cabinet with a small jar filled with white cream. She kicks the cabinet door shut, beginning to mop up the blood on Federico's back, digging her hand through the unravelled bandaging in the basket to her left to find what she would need to stitch it all up.

Within minutes, she's drawing the needle through his skin, seeing the muscles in his back flex. She refused to give him wine like his mother did, saying it was better to feel the pain so it left a lasting impression and a mental reminder to himself that he should never be a smartass again. She was a strong believer in tough love, it seemed.

"Stupid fucking idiot," she curses, and Federico isn't sure whether it's at him or at herself. It was either she was getting mad at him for almost getting himself killed, or mad at herself for caring so much, when they weren't even together. "You stupid idiot. Do you know what you are? The stupidest fucking idiot I have ever met."

Federico sighs, tensing as she draws the needle more roughly through his skin. She gasps and gives a frantic apology, as if that was supposed to make up for her words. She keeps her mouth closed for the rest of her mending, smearing the cold cream over the freshly stitched wound, and bandaging him carefully, tight and nearly uncomfortable. He doesn't get up when she's done, instead leaning back against the wall, breathing in deeply and sighing to himself.

Caterina places everything back into the basket, tossing the used needle and extra fragment of the wire they used for stitching out the window, giving no cares for where it landed. She places the basket back on top of the cabinet, and turns back to the boy still leaning against the wall. Reluctantly and desperate at the same time, she steps forward,taking his left arm, tracing the deep cut he'd gained from tumbling off of a roof, the same one she'd mended only a week before.

"You're getting hurt more often," she remarks in a soft voice, looking up at him with green eyes shining either from the moonlight or unshed, worried tears. "What are you doing?"

He lifts his head, cracking an eye open. "What do you mean what am I doing?"

She releases his arm with an exasperated sigh, arms crossed over her chest. "You aren't stupid, Fredo. I know that, but so does everyone else. You're being young and reckless and it's getting out of hand. Not only are you HURTING yourself, you'll have all these scars for YEARS, just to remind you of what you did to yourself."

"You have plenty."

She looks hurt. "But not for these reasons. I'm not being stupid. You're being - "

"A stupid fucking idiot?"

Caterina licks her lips, shaking her head. "I'm just tired of doing this, Federico. What happens when you get too hurt? What happens when you fall from a height too high and you kill yourself?" She takes a breath and pauses, air caught in her throat. "What am I supposed to do?"

He forces her to sit beside him on the low cot, with a mattress full of hay that peeks out of tears in the mattress cover and prods at both of them. For a long moment, they just listen to each other's breathing, knowing the intent of her words, the meaning that lingered behind them.

"That's another scar for you." He smiles, finger tracing the scar of her palm.

She grins. "I'd still try to fix you."

* * *

><p><strong>Yay for cheesy endings.<strong>

**Random note: I DID upload all of this in one night. These are the 5 drabbles that I found on my computer because the others are all written on my iPod and yeah.**


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